🌻 Planting My Sunflower Patch! 🌻

A Sunny Sunflower Patch!

I’m recreating my happy place—a sunny sunflower patch! In a few months, I hope I’ll have a glorious sight to share with you! But before the glory comes the grunt, so that’s what I’m doing.

My family knows me! For my gifts, sunflower seeds are a sure win! I know I should probably be spending my time planting cabbage and corn—stuff we can eat, but I think that beauty fills me up almost as well as food!

A few small packets hold so much potential!

This year, we planted the seeds Mom gave me on two sloped terraces. I’m looking forward to the cheerful mix of bright blooms!

Greg went way overboard and got me several varieties of sunflower seeds. I decided to intersperse them between the onions we planted last year. We can harvest the onions when they get bigger and they won’t disturb the flowers.

I worked to get the weeds out of the onion bed and made rows in between. I made a long row on the side for the Mammoth Gray sunflower seeds. They produce tons of seeds, and we hope to have some to eat! 😋

I worked the rows in a pattern of yellow, different color, yellow. At the end, I made a couple of rows where I sprinkled some seeds that I saved from last year of the fuzzy flowers! On the banks, I made rows going down and did the same thing.

Most of our seeds came from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Greg took on the same philosophy with the flowers as he did with the tomatoes—try many varieties!

I am excitedly looking forward to this patch! Sunflowers are so cheerful!

Did I Really Hate Sunflowers?

True story—when I was a child, sunflowers scared me. Actually, this lasted even into my college years.

Not like a scared to touch them thing, but I associated them with creepy things. For some reason, the famous paintings of sunflowers just strike me as really dark. The Van Gogh Sunflowers did not look real to me, and, frankly, creeped me out.

*apparently not all of Van Gogh’s sunflower artwork repels me, because, unknowingly, I chose a still life shot inspired by his art for my page header on my blog.

Daisies, Yes. Sunflowers, No

I had a friend in college who loved sunflowers, and I did not. I preferred daisies, which, to me, represented all things happy. So we each stuck to our favorite flower and that was that. I didn’t like her sunflowers, and especially her paintings. I don’t think she hated my daisies.

With this same friend and another one year, we traveled to New York to see Niagara Falls. Don’t laugh, but we three were just about as naive as can be. We just drove over the border into Canada with no thought whatsoever. No passports, nothing. The border officer asked us what we were doing and we told him that “we just wanted to drive around.” And he let us!

We did just drive around to see what we could see. We found a botanical gardens and stopped to take pictures. It was lovely, and, wouldn’t you know, there was a very tall stand of bright yellow sunflowers! Jewel (my friend) was in her element, and insisted that we pose with them! You know, up close and personal with the sunflowers, I realized that they aren’t dark, it’s the paintings that evoke that feeling for me! I liked the flowers after all!

I have no idea if I had a transformation at that moment, but once I liked them, I liked them for good, and over the years, they have really grown on me! The real flowers.

I think in the 90’s I did not like them because of all of the “fake sunflower” mottos and emblems plastered everywhere! On dishes, bags, just everywhere, and I really don’t like fake things. I guess I’m weird in that way, but, even now, loving sunflowers, I don’t want a bunch of stuff with sunflower decals. Just the real flowers in my garden and vases, please.

So this is funny! My friend owned the Corelle sunflower plates (back then) I ended up, way later in life picking up the vintage daisy plates at a thrift store. Daisies still charm me!

Now you know a little of my backstory.

Sunflower Patch

Here are the varieties I planted, plus the Sun Gold sunflower, which was gorgeous last year. I’m so glad I decided to harvest a lot of their seeds, because I have so many now! I’m sprinkling them about liberally!

I said they were Sun Gold, but I realized they are the Double Sun King, which to me is prettier than the Sun Gold, with its frilly petals. So you can get those at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

Saving Seeds for Sustainability is a good post to read about saving seeds, and Favorite Seed Catalogues tells where we get a lot of our seeds.

Here’s where I planted the garden! Let’s pray for sunny flowers in abundance this year!

The thought struck me: look at all of the variety in just one type of flower! They come in cute little short varieties, very tall, fluffy, smooth, vibrant orange, sunny yellows, sunset shades, stripes, solids, and some with almost no petals! God is a master designer, and His mind holds so much creativity!

In heaven some day, if you’re looking for my mansion, it may be small. But look for the big garden. Mine will be the one with all the flowers! Look for me out in the sunflower patch! Because I’m pretty sure that I’ll spend eternity discovering all of the colors and shapes that God has invented.

🌻

And take it from someone with experience. If you want to experience a bit of Heaven on earth, go spend an hour in a field of sunflowers and look up at the sky! There’s nothing like it!

Who’s with me and planting a sunflower patch?

I know you’re out there!

Oh, and which is your favorite?

Daisies or sunflowers?

Both, or neither?

Enjoy!

Laurie